This application claims the priority of Korean Patent Application No. 2001-68634, filed Nov. 5, 2001, which is incorporated herein in its entirety by reference.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an autonomous object growth control system, and more particularly, to a growth control system and method for reflecting a user""s educational intention and emotional state based on a growth direction set by a user or an object.
2. Description of the Related Art
An object, here, indicates an instrument, apparatus, or autonomous device which recognizes an ambient environment and changes its operation according to the result of recognition. A user can let the object know user""s desirable requirements by inputting predetermined mathematical values into an object. Then the object is controlled by the mathematical values and recognition results of ambient environment in order to give the user the performance which satisfies the user""s desirable requirements.
However, the user might set his/her desirable requirements to improper mathematical values, because he/she does not know the exact proper mathematical value for his/her desire. For example, many users do not know the exact desirable temperature value for their air-conditioner when they feel hot. They are not sure which degree is suitable for them, even though they want to feel cool.
To overcome this problem, approaches in sensibility ergonomics have been developed, and some degree of user""s satisfaction has been achieved even if user""s requirements are vague. In other words, the object can perform properly even if the user gives vague order. For example, the user can set the air-conditioner to xe2x80x9clittle cooler than right nowxe2x80x9d instead of xe2x80x9c19 degrees Fahrenheitxe2x80x9d.
Most of sensibility ergonomics approaches try to find the physical meanings of a user""s vague requirements throughout previously performed tests on many persons. Products, developed by these sensibility ergonomics approaches, are usually set to average values obtained through tests performed by manufacturers. For example, manufacturers set the mathematical value for xe2x80x9clittle cooler than right nowxe2x80x9d as xe2x80x9c5 degrees Fahrenheit less than the current temperaturexe2x80x9d, because the average value of answers from pre-tested persons who are asked about xe2x80x9chow low is good for xe2x80x98little cooler than right nowxe2x80x99?xe2x80x9d. Consequently, the performance of the products satisfies users"" requirement in some level, but it is difficult to control the products to be really suitable for the characteristics of individual user.
To overcome this problem, products for recognizing an emotional state of a user in real time and reflecting the result of recognition to control of the product have been developed. However, these products grant much importance to the current degree of a user""s satisfaction, so it is difficult to find the user""s general tendency which it requires long term to catch. In other words, the performance in this kind of products may unreliably change according to the current temporal emotion of the user and may diverse. Most of users want to have the object which can react the user""s current emotional state and the user""s long term tendency and habit at the same time.
Therefore, a demand for products which can adapt itself to a user over a long term and always demonstrate reliable performance even for an abrupt change of the user""s emotion, increases.
To solve the above-described problems, it is a first object of the present invention to provide an object growth control system and method for reflecting a current user""s educational intention and emotional state based on a predetermined growth course.
It is a second object of the present invention to provide a recording medium in which the object growth control method is recorded in the form of program codes which can be executed in computers.
In accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention, there is provided an object growth control system for growing an object, which includes a weighting unit for detecting external environments and a user""s state, loading weights on predetermined user emotional states, predetermined object growth tendencies, and predetermined object emotional states according to the result of detection and the user""s tendency, and outputting the results of loading of the weights as state data; a growth state analyzer for applying a predetermined statistical model to the state data input for a predetermined period to analyze the user""s tendency and outputting a degree of education on the object with respect to the user""s tendency based on the state data to which the predetermined statistical model has been applied; and an object operation controller for applying a predetermined rule-based or statistical model to the state data and the degree of education to generate a control signal for controlling the operation of the object.
There is also provided an object growth control system for growing an object, which includes a tendency selector for setting a plurality of growth tendencies, which the object can be educated or controlled to have, as object growth tendencies and providing at least one object growth tendency selected by a user; a weighting unit for detecting external environments and a user""s state, loading weights on predetermined user emotional states, predetermined object growth tendencies, and predetermined object emotional states according to the result of detection and the selected object growth tendency, and outputting the results of loading of the weights as state data; a growth state analyzer for applying a predetermined statistical model to the state data and outputting a degree of education on the object with respect to the selected object growth tendency based on the result of application; and an object operation controller for applying a predetermined rule-based or statistical model to the state data and the degree of education to generate a control signal for controlling the operation of the object.
In accordance with another preferred embodiment of the present invention, there is provided an object growth control method for growing an object, which includes detecting external environments and a user""s state, loading weights on predetermined user emotional states, predetermined object growth tendencies, and predetermined object emotional states according to the result of detection and the user""s tendency, and outputting the results of loading of the weights as state data; applying a predetermined statistical model to the state data input for a predetermined period to analyze the user""s tendency and outputting a degree of education on the object with respect to the user""s tendency based on the state data to which the predetermined statistical model has been applied; and applying a predetermined rule-based or statistical model to the state data and the degree of education to generate control signals for controlling the operation of the object.
There is also provided an object growth control method for growing an object, which includes setting a plurality of growth tendencies, which the object can be educated or controlled to have, as object growth tendencies; requesting a user to select at least one object growth tendency among the set object growth tendencies; detecting external environments and a user""s state and loading weights on predetermined user emotional states, predetermined object growth tendencies, and predetermined object emotional states according to the result of detection and the selected object growth tendency to generate weighted state data; applying a predetermined statistical model to the state data and calculating a degree of education on the object with respect to the selected object growth tendency based on the result of application; and applying a predetermined rule-based or statistical model to the state data and the degree of education to generate a control signal for controlling the operation of the object.